


Lover: a Dan and Blair Story

by acrookedsaint



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/M, dair - Freeform, each chapter is based on a song from the album, this is a productive use of my time, yep i'm totally doing a series based on lover featuring dair
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2020-11-22 15:21:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20876390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acrookedsaint/pseuds/acrookedsaint
Summary: The story of Dan and Blair, told through Taylor Swift's Lover.





	1. it's not hate, it's just indifference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘It’s not hate, Humphrey,’ she snarks, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she speaks. ‘It’s indifference.’

Dan asks the question one day, sitting next to Blair as Serena yaps away to Nate over the other side of the table.

‘Why do you hate me?’

It’s a simple question, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Blair somehow found a way to make him more confused than he already is. They’ve barely spoken. They barely know each other, and yet, every time they’re in the same room Blair glances at him once and seems to forget that he exists. He can only assume that his heritage - being from Brooklyn, of course - had ignited the fiery flames of hatred within her. 

Blair tosses a glance his way as if she’s surprised he’s still there, still the man on Serena’s arm.

‘It’s not hate, Humphrey,’ she snarks, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she speaks. ‘It’s indifference.’

Indifference, muses Dan later. He can live with that.

* * *

Serena seems to think that he and Blair would get along if they tried - really tried, not just sat across the table from each other and exchanged equally fake smiles.

Dan tries to reason with her. He’s sure that being in the same room as Blair Waldorf without Serena and Nate for buffers will probably be the end of his thus far rather miserable existence. She might even smite him where he stands if she thought for a second that he was the one who came up with this terrible idea.

But still, it’s Serena, the girl Dan’s been in love with for most of his miserable existence. Getting smote by Blair is the least he can possibly do.

* * *

The photoshoot turns out to be not quite a good idea, and as much as Dan hates to admit it, he knows that it’s Serena’s fault, in ways that he imagines that Serena herself doesn’t even understand.

He’s sure that Serena thinks it’s normal for Blair to disappear and have the photographer sleaze directions at her.

But Dan knows better. He knows what it looks like when someone’s been screwed over.

Mainly because he’s usually the one being screwed over.

Still, he finds Blair in a hallway that’s seen better days. He talks and talks and talks. He tells her about his mum. About how she left and how she’s not coming back, no matter how many waffles his dad makes and how many times Jenny talks to her over the phone on weeknights.

She turns to him when he’s done. He doesn’t expect her to say anything, maybe another snarky remark like the answer to his ‘_do you hate me_?’ question. Instead words fall out of her mouth that Dan never in a million years could have imagined would be things that happened to Blair Waldorf, Queen Bee of the Upper East Side.

She tells him about her parents’ divorce, about how her father left her mother for a man, a man who had worked for her mother as a model. She tells him how Serena left without saying goodbye and came back without any warning, how he shouldn't really worry about Chuck, because that was just the way that Chuck was. She tells him that his sister is great at calligraphy, and that he’s not so bad after all, but if he tells anyone about that last past she _will_ make sure he ends up in a sewer somewhere.

In the end, he offers her his hand to help her up, but she doesn’t take it, which he supposes he should’ve expected.

Serena is full of apologies when they see her - ‘I swear I didn’t realise B!’, but Dan notices that Blair is barely listening, only going through the motions of smiling and nodding, seemingly accepting Serena’s apologies. But Dan thinks he knows better now. Serena has a long way to go before she renews herself in Blair’s eyes. 

Dan thinks that she might deserve it. Just a little bit. 

* * *

It’s next Thursday. The ‘Non-Judging-Breakfast-Club’ is together again, Serena holding court. Dan joins them, reluctantly. He’s not a big fan of Chuck, and he and Nate haven’t really seen eye to eye since Dan heard the news that Nate had slept with Serena while he was still with Blair.

But he sits anyway, because this group of people, this _sad_ Breakfast Club are kind of his friends now.

‘Oh Humphrey,’ says Blair, flicking him a glance, ‘I forgot that you existed.’

But she smiles.

And so Dan smiles back.


	2. i love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, it’s a cruel summer, because it cannot last. Nothing good ever does.
> 
> But how she wants it to. What a breakable heaven it is.

Blair begins her new life like this: she throws out all of her headbands. She starts taking long walks in the park and getting coffee while she’s out. Not from a cafe. From a food truck, no less. She does yoga with Serena (through Skype) and even talks to Nate sometimes. 

But perhaps the most surprising part of Blair’s new life is Daniel Humphrey, who turned up once at the same showing of _ Nenette _ as her and somehow keeps appearing.

Or she keeps planning for him to reappear. 

It starts with the movies. They see them separately, of course, not _ together _, and if they happen to share a bucket of popcorn, then who’s to care?

Or really, who’s to _ know _?

They start arguing about literature, giving each other books to read - Blair with classics (Dan smirks) and him with whatever he’d laid his eye on that day. Blair rolls her eyes at his suggestions very often. 

And then they start wandering museums, making plans to see exhibitions. They spend hours, just strolling, debating art and architecture and everything in between. 

It takes a very long time for Blair to realise that she is, for the first time in her life, content. Happy.

It takes even longer to realise that she’s never felt like this before. It hits her like a ton of bricks to realise that she’s never been truly happy. 

In the end, it’s a cruel summer, because it cannot last. Nothing good ever does.

But how she wants it to. What a breakable heaven it is. 

* * *

In the light of the vending machine, Blair counts on her fingers the number of times that Serena’s gotten her in trouble because Blair was on a desperate crusade to be ‘cool’ that she’d forgotten that Serena has never once had a good idea in her life.

Especially when it involves Blair. 

She hasn’t told Serena about Dan. She doesn’t want to admit that she’s finally beginning to understand the ‘Humphrey Appeal’. She doesn’t think that Serena would understand, anyway. She’s never been interested in art, or _ Breakfast at Tiffany _ ’ _ s _. For Serena, life is a party, there are lows, sure, but it’s mostly highs, because Serena never seems to come out the other side with a hangover. 

But Blair has. And Blair does. Constantly. She wakes up every morning with an ache in her chest as she realises that the best years of her life are most probably behind her and the only thing she has to show for is a fragile status and a string of broken relationships with boys who were supposed to be her forever.

She gets a Coke and a packet of plain chips. She sits down in the hallway and is in a way instantly transported back to when Daniel Humphrey sat across from her the first time and told her his deepest and darkest secrets without ever asking her to share her own. 

Dan doesn’t ask for much, Blair realises. He simply gives and rarely takes. He’s like her guardian angel, if angels regularly rolled their eyes in a superior and slightly adorable way. 

He’s her breakable heaven. 

Blair ditches the Coke and goes to get drunk instead. 

* * *

She’s drunk. She knows she’s drunk. It’s a rush but it’s a let down. Blair wants to feel something and then feel nothing at all. Serena had called in a panic, and when Blair had finally picked up she’d been sobbing into the phone. All Blair had said was ‘I’m fine’, and hung up again. Serena’s smart enough to know that isn’t true but Blair doesn’t really care anymore. She wants to feel nothing. She wants to _ be _ nothing. And she never wants to see Chuck ever again. If he dies in a ditch somewhere it’s just an added bonus. 

There is a rap on her door. Dan pokes his head in, hair ruffled and eyes a little bleary. He’s a sleepy kind of cute at the moment. Blair hates herself for even thinking it.

‘How did you get up here?’ she slurs, regretting opening her mouth as the migraine hits her.

Dan rolls his eyes. ‘I took the elevator. There’s no garden gate to sneak through, after all.’

Blair tries to roll her eyes back at him, but from his little smirk she doesn’t think it works. Her brain is not sending signals to her body at the moment, it would seem. 

‘Why are you here?’ she asks, although she thinks she knows the answer. She’d called him midway into her fifth drink. Drunk enough to know that what she was doing was stupid, but not drunk enough to remember anything she’d actually said. 

‘Does it matter?’ he asks, and she wants to say that it does. That it does matter. To her. 

‘I guess not,’ she whispers, and when he comes to sit beside her in the dark, she lays her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. 

Her fate is sealed, she realises. Blair Waldorf loves Dan Humphrey. 

_ I love you_, she thinks. _ Isn’t that the worst thing you’ve ever heard _?

* * *

It’s a cruel summer. 

Blair cries silently, her head pillowed on Dan’s chest. What a breakable heaven she has here. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this doesn't entirely make linear sense but i'm in kind of a mood, so enjoy anyway! set circa season 5, based on/inspired by Cruel Summer.


	3. my heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Hey,’ he says softly, and picks up the tea towel to dry the dishes she’s washing.
> 
> Blair smiles. ‘Hey,’ she says, and is transported back to when they’d been washing dishes a very long time ago, and she’d said something like 'follow my lead Humphrey, you’re used to doing that'. And he’d only laughed, but he had followed her lead, and Blair had loved him just a little bit more because of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to neve for betaing this!! i am eternally grateful, mainly because i spelt 'fiance' as 'finance' and she picked up on it ;)
> 
> also, because clearly i'm insane, this is set during the five year season six time jump.

The first time that they’re alone together - really alone since god knows how long, Dan has been engaged for two years and Blair’s been married for five. She has a baby now. His name is Henry, and to the immense dissatisfaction of Chuck his favourite uncle is his uncle Dan. 

Silently, Dan wonders if this is a ploy of Blair’s to get on Chuck’s nerves, or _ something._

But he knows that he’s kidding himself. What he and Blair had, however true, however epic, is in the past. 

So he’ll be Henry’s favourite uncle. He'll be Nate’s best friend and Serena’s fiance, and that’ll be that. 

Until the party, of course.

* * *

Henry’s fourth birthday rolls around far too fast for Blair’s liking. Chuck proposes a tasteful banquet and Blair wants to ask him if that was what had happened at _ his _ fourth birthday party. 

She doesn’t though. She keeps her mouth shut and plans Henry a birthday bash featuring a numerous amount of puppies, cake and balloons. There is no theme, but Blair feels completely in control nonetheless.

That is, until Dan and Serena arrive, and Blair’s stomach drops to her feet. Even though, logically, she _ knows _ that they’re happy, she can’t help but wonder if one day she’ll see Serena’s finger bare of the giant engagement ring that Dan had gifted her two years ago. 

It’s a false hope, she knows. But her heart still pricks when Henry throws himself at Dan. And even though she really is happily married, her smile feels forced when she greets the happy couple. 

But she doesn’t say anything. These days Blair has gotten very good at not saying anything. She just watches and waits and breaks her own heart over and over again because it was _ her _ choice, not his, that put them in this position, with other people, away from each other. 

Later, she stands alone in the kitchen, watching Chuck throw Henry around like a sack of flour. She wants to say something, _ don’t throw your kid around like a sack of flour, Chuck! _ But she doesn’t, because then Chuck would give her one of those looks that says _ I can’t believe I married you. Don’t you know how to have fun? _ And then Blair would give him one of _ her _ looks that said _ Just because your definition of fun is different than mine doesn’t mean I don’t know how to have fun._

Once again, Blair says nothing, but then Dan enter the room, looking as handsome as ever in a suit that Blair’s sure Serena picked out for him.

‘Hey,’ he says softly, and picks up the tea towel to dry the dishes she’s washing.

Blair smiles. ‘Hey,’ she says, and is transported back to when they’d been washing dishes a very long time ago, and she’d said something like_ follow my lead Humphrey, you’re used to doing that._ And he’d only laughed, but he had followed her lead, and Blair had loved him just a little bit more because of it. 

They wash and dry in silence until Dan speaks. 

‘We’ve chosen a date,’ he says, and Blair’s stomach drops to her feet for the second time that day. ‘It’s in September.’

It’s this year, Blair realises. It’s _this_ _year_. All of the hopes she might of had that Dan would come to his senses and call it off were gone. This was happening. And she couldn’t be anything but happy because if she wasn’t Serena would want to know why. Chuck would want to know why. And what would Blair be able to say? _I’m still in love with Dan. I’ll probably always be in love with him. I just can’t help it_.

‘Congratulations,’ she says, smiling through her teeth. ‘It’s about time.’

Dan spares her a grin, the kind she knows are reserved only for her. That only makes what he’s saying worse. 

‘We’ve been talking about it for a while. Oh,’ he says suddenly, as if he’s just remembered something. ‘Serena wants to hold it at your house.’

Blair freezes. She feels her insides go cold at the thought of Dan getting married in _ her _ house. She can’t imagine it, and yet she can - Serena will come floating down the stairs like an ethereal being, Dan will smile lovingly at her and Blair will die a little bit more inside. 

‘Oh,’ she says, and her voice sounds cold as ice, even to her.

‘I’m sorry,’ says Dan, and reaches out to take her hand, even though it’s wet and soapy. ‘I know it’ll be weird, but Serena wants it.’

Blair tries to smile, she really does. ‘I’ll talk to Chuck,’ she manages, finally turning to look at him, and _ oh _.

When was the last time she had really looked at Dan? Really, _ really _ looked at him?

She doesn’t remember. 

But she’s looking at him now. And he’s looking back at her as if he hasn’t properly looked at her for a long time either. 

They stand like that for a long time, hands clasped, fingers intertwined, gazing into each other’s eyes like it’s a fairytale.

Only Blair knows that it isn’t, because if it was this is the moment where Dan would lean down and kiss her and she’d know that this was real.

But he doesn’t, only swallows and looks away, clearing his throat. There is a slight blush on his cheeks. Blair feels hot and prickly, pent up energy building in her body.

She wants to kiss him. She wants him to kiss _ her _ . She wants him to _ want _ to kiss her. She wants him to look at her as if he’s never seen her before, like he’s realised that all along she was the love of his life. 

There is a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about Dan that even after all this time Blair cannot for the life of her figure out. She’s always been highly suspicious that everyone who sees him wants him, but she’s never said the words aloud. 

_ If I could go back in time,_ she thinks, watching the way he smiles at the sight of Nate and Henry wrestling, _ I would take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover._

But she cannot go back. She’s made her bed, it’s her funeral. She will host Dan and Serena’s wedding at her house and she will smile and gush about the happy couple, even if she’s dying on the inside. 

‘We’ll make it happen,’ she says, offering him a smile. It’s strained, but it’s getting there.

Dan smiles back. It’s bittersweet. No longer is he the boy who saved all of his dirtiest jokes for her. He is a man who loves another woman and Blair will have to learn to live with that.

* * *

Serena and Dan get married in September, and it is a truly beautiful wedding. Blair is smiling and happy and gushes about the happy couple.

She’s dying on the inside. 

* * *

_ My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue._

They’re both married now. Happy with someone else. 

Blair will have to learn to live with that.

But still. She wonders.

_ All’s well that ends well to end up with you_.


	4. i'm so sick of running as fast as i can

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems he never runs out of words when it's all about Blair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have not abandoned this fic!! i just...forgot about it?? a special shoutout to savarkar who commented and reminded me that i had not in fact finished it and still had fifteen chapters to go.
> 
> and all my love to cara, the true mvp, who betaed this!
> 
> set circa season four.

Dan wakes up early to write. These days he has too. He’s too busy alternating between actually trying to succeed at his internship and desperately trying to one up Blair. 

He’s stuck, just like he always is. He spends far too much time thinking about writing, realising he doesn’t know what to write about and repeating the cycle again and again. He’s taken to journaling about how much he despises Blair, and it makes him feel like a fifteen year old girl. For once, he’s glad that he lives alone so that no one can see the squalor he’s succumbed to. 

He writes about how Blair had told him he looked like a Muppet because of his hair. He even does a little doodle on the side of the page. 

It seems he never runs out of words when it’s all about Blair.

* * *

‘I hate it here,’ mutters Blair, knee deep in dresses of different sizes, shapes and colours. ‘I really, really hate it here.’

Dan quirks an eyebrow. ‘You’re the one who wanted the internship. You’re the one who wanted to do something with her life.’

Blair levels him with a glare. Lately she’s had an especially short fuse. Dan thinks it may have something to do with the fact that she and Chuck have just broken up for the five hundredth time. 

‘I did,’ she snaps, wrestling with a lemon monstrosity. ‘I _ do_. It’s just…’ she frowns at him, sizing him up. ‘You couldn’t understand.’

Dan rolls his eyes. ‘It’s because I’m from Brooklyn, isn’t it? Geez Blair, I really thought we were past all of that crap.’

‘Get over yourself Humphrey,’ says Blair, also rolling her eyes. ‘It’s a gender thing, not where you live. And besides, now I’m used to the fact that you look like a rat and live like one.’

Dan brushes the insult off easily. He’s used to Blair by now - he knows her tricks, her ploys. He knows that she’s vulnerable, insecure. ‘Why can’t I understand?’

‘Because,’ states Blair primly, ‘you are a man. A man child, of course, but a man nonetheless.’

‘And that matters because?’

‘_Because_, Humphrey, you really mean to tell me that you haven’t noticed the foul mood I’ve been in ever since we started here.’

Dan bites his lip. ‘I noticed it, but I figured it was because of...you know who.’

Blair scrunches up her eyebrows. ‘You know who? Are we talking about Voldemort? Use your words, Humphrey.’

‘Chuck!’ Dan cries. ‘I thought you were sad...or moping or something like that.’

Blair turns her nose up in disgust. ‘Unlike you, Humphrey, I do not mope. And I most definitely do not scrounge around in a three day old beard with crumbs clinging to my clothes as I write ‘I heart S’ all over my apartment.’

‘Right,’ says Dan, glad that she’s insulting him again.

‘All the time,’ she says, looking wistfully off into the distance like she’s acting in a romance film, ‘I think about how I could’ve already made it to the top.’

‘If you’d focused less on terrorising my sister and more on getting good grades?’

‘I got perfect grades, thank you very much,’ Blair snaps, jabbing him in the arm with the heel of a tangerine shoe. ‘I just meant that sometimes I wonder if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.’

‘Get where?’ Dan asks, seriously pondering her statement. It’d make for a good entry in his journal, he thinks: he and Blair Waldorf discussing the gender divide, Queen B herself lecturing him on casual sexism.

‘Anywhere, really,’ she replies. The dress she’s holding is bunched in her hands, which are clenched tightly around the delicate fabric. ‘Anywhere, I could go anywhere. But instead all I get are people questioning how much of this I’ve earned - how much of it is my inheritance and how much of it is me.’

She turns to him. ‘So maybe you _ do _ get it Humphrey. You’ve suffered your whole life because you _ don’t _ come from wealth, right?’

‘Something like that,’ Dan murmurs, but he’s miles away, because in his mind, a story is unfolding, practically writing itself.

* * *

Later, he scribbles in vain before turning to his laptop. He’d reserved it for his serious stories, the ones that he’d already painstakingly handwritten and needed to be typed and sent away for publishing (although not many stories of his were being published lately, although that was mainly because he hadn’t written anything). 

His hands touch the keys. And the words come alive under his hands. They flow endlessly together, sentences forming from single letters, paragraphs forming from sentences.

Before he knows it, it’s dawn and the sun is shining through his window. 

Dan stares in amazement at what has poured out of him. He hasn’t written this much since before he started the internship - since high school, really. Hell, he hasn’t written this much since he started dating Serena, when all of his words were about golden hair and sunny smiles and the perils of love. 

This time, he writes about glossy brown hair, once paired with colourful headbands, a thunderous scowl igniting. 

And somehow, he thinks it might still be about the perils of love.

* * *

Two months later, an article is published in the New York Times. It’s by an anonymous author, although Dan thinks that Blair might’ve figured it out somehow, because she’s nice to him for three days straight after he catches her reading it. 

It’s entitled ‘_Fearless Leader: the Story of the Woman, who became the Man_’. A cheesy title, but the publisher at the New York Times had loved it. 

* * *

Eight days after the article is published, Blair hands him a copy at work. She’s made corrections all over it, suggestions made it her neat, tiny handwriting. 

And somehow, Dan thinks he understands her a little better now. 


	5. who could ever leave me darling, but who could stay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thinks that it might be some sort of cosmic retribution - she’s in exile with Dan Humphrey as her only company, and that fact alone is somehow worse than everything else combined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one's for coco!! 
> 
> as always, all my love to cara!!
> 
> ps i am a horrible person who abandoned this fic for at least four months. i can't promise regular updates but this fic will be finished this year lol.
> 
> set circa season 5...kind of all over the place

Blair spends most of her time practising her smile in the mirror, making sure that it looks balanced - a little bit of _ yes I’m fine and how are you?_ And a bit more of _ don’t pity me because I’m fine_. And to top it all off, quite a lot of _ I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy!_ _ Can’t you see my smile?_ _ I swear that I’m fine!_

After all, it’s not like Gossip Girl leaked a video of the one and only Blair Waldorf, in her wedding gown professing her undying love for a man that she _ wasn’t _marrying.

Except. 

Wait. 

That was exactly what had happened, and Blair is currently in a self imposed exile.

Is she ashamed? 

Yes. 

Is she worried?

Yes.

Is this the worst thing that’s ever happened to her?

Not by a long shot. 

Blair can handle anything - she can handle Serena and she can handle Nate and she can even handle Chuck, which is a feat within itself. 

But she can’t handle the looks that are going to be on their faces when she sees them. She’d avoided them after the wedding, after the disastrous reception and the absolutely terrible car getaway to the airport. 

Blair will never admit it, but she doesn’t know what to do, or who to turn to or -

Well, that’s not strictly true. 

There is exactly one person whom Blair sees on a regular basis. One person whom Blair allows to judge her with no limitations. She thinks that it might be some sort of cosmic retribution - she’s in exile with Dan Humphrey as her only company, and that fact alone is somehow worse than everything else combined. 

Her fairytale is in crumbles and the man she’d once compared to a mop is her only solace.

How had her life come to this?

* * *

The thing is, Dan’s not half bad company (and don’t ask her when she started thinking of him as Dan instead of Humphrey). They like all of the same things - pretentious literature and pretentious film and everything in between. Gone are the days when the only thing they had in common were a certain blonde bombshell. Now they can discuss french literature over croissants that came from _ Brooklyn_. 

That’s what Blair hates the most. That she’s fallen so far that she’s accepting croissants from _ Brooklyn _ so she can spend time with the one person she feels isn’t judging her. 

Or isn’t _ actively _judging her. 

Dan makes her pancakes in the morning, and he always cuts them into the letter ‘b’, and it’s so sickenly adorable that Blair wants to throw herself out the window. She doesn’t need comfort, she needs comfort. She either needs to fix her marriage or she needs to get out of it. 

She doesn’t have time for pretentious literature or pretentious film. She doesn’t have time for any of it. She shouldn’t be eating croissants from Brooklyn and the man who might be her best friend shouldn’t be making her pancakes in the shape of letters and he definitely shouldn’t be putting chocolate chips in them when she tilts her head and pouts in just the right way. 

Her life shouldn’t be this way. 

Except that’s not right. 

She shouldn’t _ want _ her life to be this way.

* * *

The thing is that Dan is kind of wonderfully accommodating. He understands her moods and he even agrees to sit at least two seats apart at the cinema. He gets extra butter in his popcorn because he knows that she likes it and because he knows that despite her distance rule, she’s stealing some. He knows her and it scares Blair.

It scares her more than anything. 

She’s never liked being vulnerable, although she’s always felt intrinsically bare. She’s been second choice a thousand times. To Serena, to Nate, to Chuck. She’s even been second choice to both her mother and her father. 

She’s never been second choice to Dan. 

She hates it. 

She hates that she knows his favourite book. She hates that she knows his favourite film. She hates that she knows how he takes his coffee and the bakery he gets those stupid croissants from. She hates that despite everything, all the hell she’s put his family through, that he’s still here, through everything. 

She hates it. 

Maybe that’s what really scares her. 

To be known. To have someone love you in spite of everything you despise about yourself. 

Or maybe what scares her is knowing someone that way. 

Because if she knows someone, if she _ loves _ someone, despite everything that’s happened, well that means one thing and one thing only.

She’s in too deep and it’s time to cut her losses.

* * *

The thing is, Dan’s hard to get rid of. He’s hard to annoy and he’s hard to upset. She can’t seem to get under his skin and she never has been able to. The Blair of met steps and headbands was impressed by his iron will.

The Blair of failed marriages and fears too big for her body hates it. 

She hates a lot of things these days.

* * *

She comes up with a plan. She’s seen the movies. She knows the script. Cruelty wins in the movies. Always.

So she’s cruel. Even crueler then she was in school. She gets mad over something stupid - the movie they’re watching and Dan’s opinion on it, and she spirals from there. 

She screams and shouts and she even cries at some point. 

Dan stands there and takes it, an impassive look on his face. He stands there and takes it as she screams about how he ruined her life and about how much she hates him. 

He stands there and in that very moment she’s never been more scared. 

She leaves in a hurry, and she goes to bed with at least four sleeping pills lying heavy in her stomach. 

There are some things she’d rather not think about. 

_ They see right through me_.

* * *

In the back of her mind, she remembers something she’d told Dan a long time ago, when she’d thought herself unloveable by anyone other than Chuck. ‘After all,’ she’d said, the usual bite missing from her voice, ‘who could love me after all that I’ve become?’

_ Who could ever leave me darling? _

* * *

Dan, in all his Muppet haired glory smiles at her from behind the wheel. ‘Where to?’ he asks, like this is any other day and she’s not fleeing from her wedding in disgrace.

‘Just drive,’ she mutters. 

But the corners of her mouth lift, just a little. 

_ But who could stay? _

* * *

‘What if I lose everything?’ she whispers, and the fear is real and palpable.

Dan smiles. ‘You’ll still have me.’

_ You could stay_.

* * *

The morning after their big fight Blair arrives back at the loft. She’s going to apologise. She’s not going to be scared anymore. 

Dan smiles at her over his coffee cup. There are pancakes on the counter. Chocolate chip. Cut into the shape of the letter ‘b’. 

Despite herself Blair can’t help but smile. Perhaps there isn’t anything wrong with being known. Perhaps there isn’t anything wrong with being scared about it either. 

She eats her pancakes and the croissants and then later, at the cinema, she eats most of Dan’s buttered popcorn. 

And for a brief, shining moment, Blair allows herself to be happy. 

And then reality comes crashing back down. 

_ I see right through me_.

* * *

Blair lies awake and wonders if her life had been different, would she be different too?

Somehow she doubts it.

Some people are just born broken. 

Sometimes, that’s just the way that it is. 

_ Combat. I’m ready for combat. _


End file.
